


Use What You Have

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen, Metaphysics, Season/Series 11, Self-Hatred, Soul food, drunk conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7684882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amara told him what it'd be like--to become a part of her, one soul in a belly filled with many. As one God-insurrector about another, Dean asks Cas if she's telling the truth.</p>
<p>Cas frowns. "Is there an answer that will make you feel better than others?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Use What You Have

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kribban](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kribban/gifts).



"I'm just wondering," says Dean.

Cas frowns. "Is there an answer that will make you feel better than others?"

"Cas, if you're gonna lie to me, don't be obvious about it."

"I'll take that into consideration."

Dean looks up then, but Cas doesn't seem any more or less suicidally morose than usual. False alarm, then. 

Dean lifts his fifth and gestures towards Sam's cup. Arches his eyebrows.

Cas takes a moment to decipher his meaning, then shakes his head. Dean refills his own glass.

"It's not feeling as such," Castiel says after a long while, a silence Dean smoothed over with the comforting buzz of liquor. "This is only an extrapolation, of course, having never dwelt within her. But when I took Purgatory's souls into my vessel, it was a very familiar thing. I could feel what they felt. It's much like Heaven, that feeling--not the Heavens of the human souls, but where the echelons of angels dwell. Beyond vessels, beyond image."

This isn't a good drunk conversation. This is a try-every-upper-on-the-shelf conversation; a let-Sam-do-it conversation. 

"So is it like, a can of sardines situation?" Dean asks. "Or is it more of a human centipede kind of thing? Being all mushed up and--I dunno--fucked-up 'holistic' inside Amara."

"I don't see how either of those descriptions would make this more legible to you," says Cas.

"I've got a real good imagination."

"It's not like Hell, if that's your concern. She is God's Sister. She wouldn't deign to Lucifer. I imagine it's like Heaven--there's no geometry to it, no edges. Like I said, no feelings, as such. The souls exist and don't. Parcels of photons. Thick sheets of Creation, or Chaos, bound together."

This is really not a good drunk conversation.

"You ever miss it?" Dean asks.

"Yes," Cas answers instantly. Then he says, "But I didn't intend this as an advertisement."

"I'm not looking to buy," Dean assures him. Cas says photons, Dean thinks pain. Edgelessness, asphyxiation. Sheets and bindings were weight, claustrophobia. And he'd miss Sam. Even if feelings weren't allowed. He'd miss Sam so much the entire big glob of him and them wouldn't have a choice but to all miss Sam.

Hell, he doesn't feel much of anything as it is, and he still kind of misses Sam. Sam, who's literally on a milk run. Sam, who will be home fifteen minutes from now.

Fuck, Dean thinks. He's really kind of drunk right now.

Maybe that's all Cas meant. Maybe living inside Amara wasn't all that different from staying on the outside. You don't need to lose your body to feel like you have no control. No hold on what happens next.

So yeah, maybe Dean can imagine what it's like to be a soul inside Amara. His is probably already half there, anyway, ringing the bell and then dingdong ditching her. At least for now. 

But when he imagines opening that door, and coming home to himself inside her, that makes it easier for Dean to want to stay away. When he imagines his soul inside her, her allure goes cold. It's far easier to hate her, then.

Sam comes home, though. With milk and three Italian subs and beer only. He always buys for Cas, too, though Cas always declines.

"Are... you guys okay?" Sam asks.

"No," says Cas.

But Dean thinks about himself and hates that and thinks about himself inside Amara and fucking hates her, too. 

It's about time there's an upside to Dean's shame.

"Yeah," he replies, exceptionally truthfully. "I'm good. I'm actually really good."


End file.
